A Vision and a Task

A vision without a task is but a dream,
a task without a vision is only drudgery,
but a task with a vision can change the world.

-Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood

My vision is that each day I work with young kids in Philly, they will feel the motivation and skills to dream big and act toward achieving their goals. In other words, they will be critical thinkers and will be able to diagnose a problem in their community and work to rectify it. Fighting for a purpose, building communities of strength, and speaking with honesty, all of these qualities require strong men and women to implement them, my dream is that it becomes their dream.

Specific to food, I dream of a day when the students I work with will see the problems existing in the current food system and they will fight to change them on a local level. After all, working in the classroom to educate students to the possible health alternatives available to them must include an action element. Omitting a challenge to these young people would do them the greatest disservice of not granting them the authority and wherewithal to change the dominant logic of their lives. There are problems with the food system in which they live. Ironically, they know so better than I do, and yet it is I doing the educating.

It is with this perspective that I immerse myself in the culture of these schools and allow the students to speak for themselves. I will facilitate the conversation and I will challenge them to think of an ideal, a dream, and strive for it. I will do no less.

They must be responsible for their own dreams and tasks so as to empower and enforce their personal maintenance of those visions for change. They know the problems, with my help they can imagine a solution, and with their communities they can change the food system to support and preserve a culture of care for the land and their bodies.

Practically speaking, this work will be done through many conversations dealing with critical thinking and role playing. From there, all I can do is prove to them they know the issues at hand in their communities, and if they want better for themselves they need to fight for it.

Such is a vision for change.